Et Tu, Ioannes?

The Supreme Court has ruled the individual mandate is constitutional as a tax. So the individual mandate is not a permissible use of the commerce clause; however, it is appropriate for Congress to levy a tax that essentially forces taxpayers to buy health insurance.

I will have to wait until I read the entire opinion before rendering judgment, but at first blush this looks like a terrible defeat for the rule of law.

By the way, it looks like it was a 5-4 decision. Kennedy voted with Scalia, Thomas and Alito. Let that sink in.

Correction: I am now reading that it was 6-3. Honestly, I’m reading a lot of conflicting reports, so I’ll refrain from further commentary until I read the opinions.

Correction to the Corrction: Nope, Kennedy, Alito, Thomas and Scalia would have decreed the entire act unconstitutional. It was John Roberts who saved Obamacare.

And now I offer my apologies to all those I scolded for critiquing the John Roberts selection. You were right. I’ve thus changed the post title.

We need to win both houses by super-majorities and the presidency in order to repel Obamacare.

I don’t see this happening.

And the argument that we can stop funding of Obamacare is pointless, because once a democrat takes the executive branch and the legislative branch (which will happen over time), they’ll go back and fund it.

It’s a bad day for American Freedom.

That and Chief Justice Roberts is looking more like the equivalent of Bush I’s Souter. A liberal wolf in conservative sheepskin.

I am beyonmd livid, BUT we have to remember that God allows everything to happen for a reason, and Jesus Christ is STILL on the Throne and STILL in control.

Obama cannot and will not win. He will one day stand before that Great White Throne of Justice as we all shall. He will answer for his crimes and he will NOT escape the rightful punishment due to him (as none of us shall escape should we remain in a state of unrepentant sin).

If this doesn’t put the nail in the coffin of the “you must vote GOP because of the importance of Supreme Court nominations” meme, nothing will. The appointment of John “Roe is settled law, and I do pro bono work for the homosex lobby” Roberts should have been enough in itself; but really, can there be any reasonable doubters now?

Roberts (via FoxNews:) “The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional in part The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause,” Roberts wrote. “That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage it. In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance [empahsis mine]. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.”

This was a great victory for limiting the scope of the Commerce Clause.

Indeed, as I read through his opinion now, this would be one of the great Supreme Court decisions of all-time if Roberts had stopped on page thirty. Alas, he continues.

Unfortunately, Roberts’ decisions to apply the taxing power to the individual mandate may be an even more absurd application than relying on the commerce clause. I’ll post on the Roberts’ decision in a little bit, I hope.

I will never comply! We have been stabbed in the back by Chief Justice “Bart Stupak” John Roberts! Sadly, I’ll probably end up in prison over this. I will never give my money for abortion!!! There will be no redress from this. The entire republic has been fatally undermined. I do not envision an electoral remedy. I am cleaning my shootin’ irons.

I haven’t really been praying about this in particular– thinking about it but not praying. I will pray more. I will give to the Becket fund. Would like to go to Courthouse steps but alas Even if we had a many people in Washington as they do on Jan. 22, will they pay attention? I will vote__________. II hope the repub convention speaks loud and clear to this issue. I hope Rubio etal take a look at what justice Kennedy saw.

Arizona got trashed so why is this a big surprise? The fix was in when Kagan and Sotomayor got in. The bishops have zero chance of winning against the Obama juggernaut. “Women’s rights” will trump “religious liberty.” Time to re-read 1984.

From facebook:Todd Brophy posted in Hot Air Free Speech Zone
Todd Brophy 9:38am Jun 28
OK……………. I feel much better about this now. The States can opt out of the Medicare boondoggle. This reaffirms the 10th Amendment and States rights. This law cannot be supported by the Commerce Clause argument. The Federal Government, under this precedent, cannot force you to buy anything. The personal mandate is a tax. If you refuse to pay it, there is no mechanism to force payment. This makes the law a sham. If the mandate is a tax, it may be repealed by reconciliation. This means we need 51 votes in the Senate, not 60. Roberts is perhaps a genius and he is telling us, you make think you lost, you won big, now vote Obama out and secure your future.

Don, praying that you get well so soon. For your own comfort and so you can get it taken care of before Obamacare fully kicks in and you find yourself in “hospice” due to this malady disease which would be too costly to treat.

The Federal Government, under this precedent, cannot force you to buy anything. The personal mandate is a tax. If you refuse to pay it, there is no mechanism to force payment.

I simply do not understand how people can make this argument. If you don’t pay your taxes you go to jail. It would certainly be interesting to see a person make a legal challenge when they file their taxes but leave off the portion that is dedicated to the individual mandate. Methinks they would be less than successful.

(Don’s wife Cathy again:) Thanks for the prayers & good wishes! We convinced our family doctor to open his office early so he could see Don & call in prescriptions for Flomax & paid meds to the pharmacy. (How willing would a physician be to provide that kind of above-and-beyond service under Obamacare?)

I’ve been thinking, which is always dangerous, but it’s been a fairly crisis-free work day so there’s been time. Maybe all the crises are in WDC right now . . .

Anyway, this excerpt from Herr Roberts keeps jumping up at me and shouting.

” . . . it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.” Again, emphasis mine.

No legal scholar am I, but this looks like SCOTUS has just made it Constitutional for Congress to tax a non-activity. Like division by zero, this makes such power infinite in scope. Regardless of whether it takes place acorss state lines, it is now possible for Congress to say “You are not [doing, buying, participating in] thing X, and therefore we shall tax you for this not doing of it.”

Now, I also do not consider myself an alarmist, but how many steps is it between the power to tax for Not Doing Something, and This:

“He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.” Rev 13:16-17

You want to be exempt from all the various taxes incurred by not doing things? Well, here. Just put this on yourself someplace obvious, just so we can keep track . . .

Catherine A. McClarey says:
Thursday, June 28, 2012 A.D. at 9:20am
(Guest comment from Don’s wife Cathy:) Don’s just come down with a kidney stone; otherwise, I’m sure he’d be commenting at length on this.”
Catherine: To purge kidney stones, boil parsley, bunches of parsley and consume the water. After about two weeks, the kidney stone will be passed. My mom was told to do this and it worked for her saving her from surgery. Sorry you are ill, Donald. Many prayers, in Latin and in English. Parsley is an organic deodorant good for halitosis, body order and other things. Happy kidneys to you.

Ah, the kidney stone. It’s said that imperfect contrition is sufficient for a sacramental confession – that is, a fear of the pains of hell. One little kidney stone and you’ll spend the rest of your life with a strong incentive to holiness.

In 923 Executive Orders, Obama has declared martial law and given as though he had the authority to order the Supreme Court around, the unauthorized power to enforce his 923 and all Executive Orders for the past fifteen years. These orders include assigning every piece of free land and waterway as well as all pieces of private property to himself. Obama has already made the law to take all private property as his own, he just needs a cover like Obamacare to set the leemings running. Saul Alinsky would be proud. Let Our Lady of Victories hold FREEDOM from despots, dictators and Obama. Let FREEDOM be granted to the unborn, and the Person of God in the public sqaure.

This is one ugly, senseless, malignant opinion on so many levels. The majority opinion is unreadable, or not necessary to read, in part because you know what to expect from the lefties. But Robert’s legal construction to side with the lefties is so bad, so absurd that it literally shreads the constitution. At least now there is no pretense of having a constitution limiting the powers of a central government.

The dissent is real simple, eloquent and straight forward. The dissent points out, citing Madison, that taxing authority is limited to the purposes of the federal government as enumerated in the Constitution. Makes sense right? Otherwise, you can tax for that which is unconstitutional. So Roberts is part of the majority which held the law unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause—-you actually have a majority holding on this point. How then does Roberts go with the lefties, who hold the constitution in disdain, and find that the taxing provision of the Orwellian “Affordable Health Care Act” is permissible when he otherwise holds that congress did not have power under the commerce clause to enact it.

Unlike the lefties, I find Roberts’ legal constuct to be dangerous. Congress can always use taxing authority to undermine the constitution. And if a tax can be used to undermine the constitution and modulate and control social behavior, then the all powerful central government can use its unmitigated taxing power to regulate religion (there is no way applying Roberts’ logic that the religious mandate could be struck down), regulate home schooling or private schooling (“taxed” for not teaching homosexual curriculum), regulate the size of families (taxed for having more than two kids), regulate food or beverage consumption (taxed based on calorie intake), regulate fuel consumption (“taxed” for excessive fuel consumption), regulate choice of consumer goods such as vehicles (“taxed” for not purchasing a “green” car),—–regulate from a central authority any human or civic activity under the rubric of “taxation”.

This is an unspeakably dangerous precedent and a super highway to serfdom. If you hear a pundit say this will mobilize the base blah blah blah….ignore him. The danger is that as precedent any congress, and for sure any leftist president and congress has now been given unbridled powers. It’s not just bad for now, it’s bad for the future of this country.

“regulate home schooling or private schooling (“taxed” for not teaching homosexual curriculum), regulate the size of families (taxed for having more than two kids), regulate food or beverage consumption (taxed based on calorie intake), regulate fuel consumption (“taxed” for excessive fuel consumption), regulate choice of consumer goods such as vehicles (“taxed” for not purchasing a “green” car) . . .”

Regulate the dispensation of contraceptives, sterilization and abortions on demand (taxed for not providing these things.) The left has been wanting to get its hands on the Church’s money for decades, and now it has the tools.

Euthanasia is next.

I just finshed “Sons of Cain.” While no Clancy novel, the underlying theme is crystalline and fighteningly real. The dogmatic narrative of Chapter 37 is the most clear and pointed explanation of the current political landscape I have ever read.

WK Aiken mentioned the book, “Sons of Cain”, which obviously I must now buy ad read. A review at Amazon says:

“An ancient group of twelve unspeakably powerful men are prepared to implement mass suicide in the United States. Already in control of the Congress and the Presidency, all that they lack is the Supreme Court. The only thing standing between these SONS OF CAIN and the lives of the Court is a small group of dedicated warriors. Wealthy ex SEAL, Nick Rieper, and his dozen, Knights of Longinus, may be the most deadly strike force alive. The have pledged their lives, their fortunes and their honor to battle international Satanism. Battle is joined as they engage the Cainites and their demon leader, Namon, in mortal combat. They stand alone as the only force alive with the knowledge, the skill and the faith to prevent a crime that will change America… forever.”

Sadly, Satan has been in control of SCOTUS for a very long time indeed, at least since Roe v Wade, and perhaps since the Dred Scott decision of 1857.

Hope you will feel better soon, Don.
Have heard good things about blueberries (to add to Mary’s idea) from someone who could understand the discomfort, but this day is different … .
My father warned me that I may live to see the loaf of bread I might have, if I were wise enough to stop shopping for inedible things, be why I got killed by some ‘starving’ mob.
No exec. order to help with chaos from unknown right and wrong.

What we have witnessed today is something akin to the ascendancy of the NAZI’s to power in Germany. It was an evil turning point for Germany and the whole of Europe, the same here. We are on an unalterable path to destruction, and we are dragging the rest of the world down with us.

Alphatron, our country has taken a step that cannot be retraced. The momentum of evil is at a self-generating pace. I think we will not see the defeat of this evil until there has been much, much bloodshed.

This Supreme Court decision can ultimately be used to implement forced family planning similar to China’s.

I agree that this is a lousy decision, but in a sense this is what is already being done, but in reverse. Due to the child tax credit, I pay $5000 less in taxes because I have five kids. Now, I think that’s a perfectly fair way to make up for the fact that parents are performing a valuable service to the state and absorbing a lot of social costs, but the anti-kid folks flip this around and complain that the government is charging them extra taxes for not having had kids.

While there’s a psychological difference between taxing people for not doing something and giving people a tax credit for doing something, the incentive isn’t hugely different. (Where I think the ruling really stinks is that is basically makes up this gloss, the law clearly wasn’t written as a tax in the traditional sense, it was written to force people to buy health insurance.)

“While there’s a psychological difference between taxing people for not doing something and giving people a tax credit for doing something, the incentive isn’t hugely different. ”

I think I would disagree. A $1000 per kid tax credit is not going to affect my family decision-making, the same way that a mortgage interest deduction is not going to affect my home purchase decisions. I’m either ready for such steps or I’m not. Lowering my taxes a little because I do something I was going to do anyway is icing on the cake; in choosing not to do these things, I do not spend what those who get the credit do, and ulitmately I get to choose because I have my reasons: I don’t want to be a father or I don’t want the responsibility of home ownership. So the math is a wash and I still make my own decisions.

However, a $1,000 tax on not requiring my kids to attend the State-mandated classes that all schools must teach on how there is no sin, all sexuality is fine and our Friend the State is our sole benefactor will have me howling. That’s a hypothetical, to be sure, but it’s not outlandish when one considers what’s already being promulgated in the indoctrination halls. The point is that I have no choice here. I have to do one of three painful things: betray my moral constitution, pay money I can’t afford or become a prisoner of the State. Forcing me into behaviors I object to on all levels by means of extortion is every kind of evil.

This doesn’t even touch the aspect of how the State can now tax the Church into oblivion by charging her for the continued ability to obey her conscience.

Sometimes I just feel so defeated, but then the thought came to me: didn’t Our Lord say that when I am weak, is when He is strong? That means we must let go and trust Him completely because no matter how dark things appear, and it will get worse, He’s ultimately in control and will bring about an eventual purification. My prayer is: “Almighty God, Merciful Father, please restore us to your grace, rebuild us in your image, let America fulfill her destiny – the reason you called her into being. We ask this through Jesus Christ, your Son, Our Lord. Amen. Our Lady of America, pray for us!”

Don, for kidney stones, I’ve used Chanca Piedra. It’s a herbal formula from South America that can be purchased in a Health Food Store. You put about 5-10 drops in an 8oz glass of water, twice a day and it takes away the pain and breaks up the stone so it can pass. I hope you feel better soon – I know what you’re going through!

According to Roberts’ logic (which, again, I want to emphasize, I don’t agree with) in order for the “tax” argument to work rather than the “penalty” argument, the tax has to be lower than the cost of the behavior avoided. Thus, there could only be a tax for not sending your kid to public sex ed classes if the tax was lower than the cost of the class — which if it’s a public school would be $0.

Look, I agree that it’s a ridiculous piece of reasoning, I just don’t think it leaves us notably more open to tyranny than we were before. This isn’t going to “turn us into China”, it’s just a lousy decision. And hopefully one that we can overturn come the fall by kicking Obama out of office.

I don’t think Romney would be effective in overturning Obamatax. One of his economic advisers is Greg Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard. Mosey on over and take a look (http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/) at how similar Mankiw’s logic was back in 2007 to this Court’s and the very close similarity to Romney’s Health Care Plan in Massachusetts.

I was in need of medical care in Sweden during a visit in the early 80s and was lucky to be able to avail myself of a free medical clinic. Certainly no frills and comfy upholstered chairs in the packed waiting room, but the medical care seemed to be adequate for my needs. Our populace won’t like the downgrade of facilities and the long wait if it truly comes to that here, but I think we should be more concerned and focused with religious freedom at this point.

PM Hope you will feel better soon, Don.
Have heard good things about blueberries (to add to Mary’s idea) from someone who could understand the discomfort, but this day is different … . Blueberries and cranberries aid in the removal of e-coli that adheres to the kidneys like barnacles. The kidney stone is an aggregate of uric acid, which may be reduced to particles like sand and passed, by sonic waves, while the patient sits in a specially prepared bath of water. The continued use of parsely, blueberries and cranberries are more enjoyable than the bath. Celery reduces the uric acid in the joints called gout. I am sure you are appraised of all this but I had to say it. I am sorry you are sick.

W.K. Aiken. I see Father Larry Richards on Living Right with Dr. Ray Guarendi, a show on EWTN. Prayer always gives us more time, if we ask for it. The good will die with the bad. May it not come to that.

“While there’s a psychological difference between taxing people for not doing something and giving people a tax credit for doing something, the incentive isn’t hugely different.”

Actually, I see a huge difference. When a tax credit is given, it serves to reduce the taxes one owes. The child tax credit has been written to give people money if their tax liability is reduced to less than zero. I have eight children, and so I turn around and use it to pay the very regressive taxes that exist in my state. At any rate, the cost of that subsidy is spread over the entire population, and to future generations through the issuance of federal debt. No one person is on the hook for it. Furthermore, by the monetization of our national debt, the recipient also ends up paying for it through higher prices that result from the weakening of our currency. There are also tax credits for a number of other things such as electric vehicles. The government says, “you pay less and we might kick in a little extra.” I disagree with this on principal. The government shouldn’t be cutting me a check for my children. It’s insulting.

When an activity is taxed, however, that individual bears the full brunt of it. It’s not spread out among the rest of the population. If the government decides to tax someone $50,000 for not using birth control, that individual had better cough up the cash or their wages will be garnished, their assets seized, and they could potentially end up in jail if it’s judged to be tax evasion. If they decide to give a tax credit for up to 2 children, and tax someone $100,000 for each extra child after the second, it’s the same. Pay up, or else. This is actually how they do it in China. They call it the “social maintenance fee.” This article at http://www.economist.com/node/21557369 explains how it works.

It states “The fine for having extra children is known as the “social maintenance fee”. Mr He estimates the government has collected over 2 trillion yuan ($314 billion) in such fees since 1980. Failure to pay means the second “black” child cannot obtain a household-registration document, or hukou, which brings with it basic rights such as education. The amount of the fine varies from place to place. A husband and wife in Shanghai will each pay 110,000 yuan ($17,300), three times the city’s average annual post-tax income, for a second child. The fine increases with income. The rich can shell out millions.”

This sounds strikingly similar to enforcement of the individual mandate for health insurance.

0.01: If the supreme court had said it was unvalid, the left would have blamed it on the partishanship of the court. Every liberal, and independant would think that they are the victim because partisans impede “progress”. The gloating on the right would be a powerful force of encouragement for these leftists to do everything they can to win this election. Now however, they think they’re flying high, when in reality the people who voted for him are now seeing the arrogance and the straightforward decieving they are submitted too. That creates much needed repugnance on the people who otherwise would have voted for him. The brilliancy of the Supreme Court assuring that people know it is a Tax, and the excerpt that refers to the fact that the Supreme Court is not there to help the ignorance of the voters who put such a leftist in power is a clear rallying call for people to wake up. An awakening that would not have happened in another way.

0.02: what if in catholic prayer….it was revealed…. that the only thing that could stop his re-election was to make that decision, and word it so to give Romney the much needed ammunition. Look at how riled up people are now… that translates into votes. One has to welcome the overconfidence of the Democrats right now…

Furthermore, when the contraception mandate lawsuits make their way to a supreme court decision, no one can say that it was made in deeply flawed partisan court. People’s eyes would awake to the fact that the only ones that can fight the liberal march to perdition will be the Catholic Church. All ye conservatives, join the only ones who can fight the gates of hell—and prevail!